1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a method for providing a phone book in a mobile communication terminal, and in particular, to a method for providing a phone book using business card recognition in a mobile communication terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
Mobile communication terminals are widely used due to their convenient portability. Mobile communication terminal manufacturers are developing mobile communication terminals with more advanced functions, in an effort to secure more users. For example, the mobile communication terminals provide various functions including, but not limited to, a phone book, a game, a scheduler, a short message, an internet, an e-mail, an alarm, a MP3 (MPEG Audio Layer-3), a digital camera and an electronic dictionary.
A conventional mobile communication terminal has a memory storing a plurality of phone numbers and personal names corresponding to each phone numbers. It has a function to make a call to a phone number retrieved by a name stored in memory. The phone numbers are stored in a phone book in the mobile communication terminal. When a user searches the phone book by pressing predetermined keys of a key pad, the corresponding phone number is displayed on Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) screen.
A business card generally contains effective and important personal data. The business card provides names of a person and a company, a position held, phone numbers such as mobile, company and home, together with other contact information such as an email and an address, etc. The user can extracts required data from the business card and stores such data in the phone book of the mobile communication terminal, where the user can manage the data stored therein. Also, the data stored in the phone book can be used for functions such as call connection, Short Message Service (SMS), fax or email.
However, inputting the data from business cards into the mobile communication terminal requires manual work. Consequently, where the users have two or more business cards, it takes a sufficient amount of time to manually input data from the business cards into the phone book of the mobile communication terminal. This gives rise to inaccuracy and makes it difficult to manage the data. As such, where there are many stored items, in addition to the phone book, the search for stored phone numbers can be a tedious and troublesome task to the users, thereby inconveniencing the user.